PJM

Duke Energy, LG Chem and Greensmith teamed up to build a battery-based energy storage system in Ohio, designed to enhance reliability and increase stability on the electric power grid. The new 2-MW storage project will assist in regulating electric grid frequency for PJM, the transmission organization that powers much of the eastern U.S. The system will be built at Duke Energy's retired W.C. Beckjord coal-fired power plant in New Richmond, Ohio, and is expected to be operational by late 2015.

Changes envisioned by PJM call for ever more structured markets, further reducing the scope of the competitive landscape from which RTOs arose. They may produce a system that is actually more costly and less innovative than regulation.

A case study from PJM on competitive procurement of regional transmission under FERC Order 1000.

What happens to FERC Order 1000, and its vaunted quest for fairness and transparency, when regional grid planners ask for competitive bids to solve a pressing transmission need, but then modify some of the project proposals, unilaterally, in an honest effort to improve them?

Siemens will provide the grid connection for an offshore wind farm off the coast of the U.K.; ABB will supply gas-insulated switchgear for substations in New Jersey; A team from the Microgrid Institute will design, simulate, and test microgrid control systems for two Maryland suburbs; Plus solar power developments by Xcel Energy, SunEdison, ReneSola, and Duke Energy; and others…

The AEMA sees the self-help DR revolution as a key to America’s recent industrial renaissance: “If demand response is removed from wholesale markets,” the group says, then “the electric grid is back to the rotary phone.”